Searching for gravitational waves from Cassiopeia A with LIGO

TL;DR

This paper details a search for continuous gravitational waves from the neutron star in Cassiopeia A using LIGO, aiming to detect signals despite the lack of electromagnetic pulsations, and discusses the potential sensitivity of such a search.

Contribution

It introduces a search method for gravitational waves from Cassiopeia A, demonstrating the feasibility of detecting signals with current LIGO sensitivity despite unknown pulsation parameters.

Findings

Potential to detect gravitational waves from Cassiopeia A with LIGO

Method applicable to similar neutron stars

Sensitivity estimates suggest possible detection with sufficient computing resources

Abstract

We describe a search underway for periodic gravitational waves from the central compact object in the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. The object is the youngest likely neutron star in the Galaxy. Its position is well known, but the object does not pulse in any electromagnetic radiation band and thus presents a challenge in searching the parameter space of frequency and frequency derivatives. We estimate that a fully coherent search can, with a reasonable amount of time on a computing cluster, achieve a sensitivity at which it is theoretically possible (though not likely) to observe a signal even with the initial LIGO noise spectrum. Cassiopeia A is only the second object after the Crab pulsar for which this is true. The search method described here can also obtain interesting results for similar objects with current LIGO sensitivity.